About

About Taipei

A blend of traditional culture and cosmopolitan life, located in northern
Taiwan, Taipei is the political, economic, financial, and cultural center of
Taiwan. It has a thriving artistic and academic scene and countless modern
commercial buildings. With its vibrant cultural and economic growth, it has
become a modern international metropolis. For more information about Taipei,
please visit.

Taipei is known as a high tech city by international community. In 2000,
Taipei has already been rated as the top information city in the Asia-Pacific
region, and the eighth in the world. Wireless access is available in major
business areas and MRT stations throughout Taipei, and the city boasts nearly
a 90 percent wireless coverage.

Taipei offers a friendly environment for foreign visitors with all the road
signs and traffic signs in both Chinese and English throughout the city. In
addition, with an increasing number of people speaking fluent English, Taipei
is becoming even more bilingual. The combination of Taipei Mass Rapid
Transportation (MRT) system, bus system, and taxi (can be called on the
street) will take the participants to all the interesting sites of Taipei at
an affordable price.

A blend of various cultures, Taipei is a gourmet’s heaven, providing
all kinds of cuisines - from Western-style meals to Chinese food, from exotic
delicacies to local dishes. Taipei’s tourist night markets are very
popular to foreign visitors, offering a wide variety of Taiwanese dishes at
very low prices.

Taipei is a modern cosmopolitan metropolis with a lively and diverse face.
Thanks to old houses, aged streets, temples and religious ceremonies, Western
Taipei still retains the historical atmosphere. By contrast, Eastern Taipei is
a newly developed financial and commercial district. Here, Taipei 101
Building, which until recently had been the tallest skyscraper in the world,
should not be missed and is worth a visit. The National Palace Museum, located
in the northern part of the city, is also a must-see for those who fond of
ancient Chinese culture.

Outside the city center, Yangmingshan National Park is a good place to
enjoy volcanic scenery and take a hot mineral bath to relieve the exhaustion
of a day's work. Hot springs can also be found at Beitou or Wulai.

Before you visit, file away these 20 facts about Taipei

While mining sulfur in the summer of 1697, Qing dynasty official Yu
Yonghe described the muddy marsh that is now Taipei as a basin lake which
formed because of earthquakes. He also deemed it “inaccessible and
unvisited.”

Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan have stayed in
Taipei’s Grand Hotel, a 14-floor Chinese-style palace nestled in
Yuanshan (Round Mountain). The 500-room landmark was established in 1952 and
ranked one of the world’s top 10 hotels by Fortune in 1967. The building
is decorated with more than 200,000 dragons, including a century-old bronze
one plated in 24-karat gold.

Lunar New Year is the biggest holiday for the Taiwanese. The place to
shop for all your celebration needs? Dihua Street Section 1 in the Dadaocheng
area near the Tamsui River. The historic district, which dates back to the
Qing period, is lined with traditional shops selling medicinal herbs, teas and
wholesale fabric.

When it opened in 2004, the 1667-foot-tall Taipei 101 was the
world’s tallest building. Although Dubai’s Burj Khalifa stole the
title in 2009, the 101-floor structure (which has an additional five floors
underground) now has a different claim to fame, thanks to Popular Mechanics:
"World's Toughest Building." A 730-ton damper helps steady the Xinyi
Road tower, which sits 660 feet from a fault line on an island often hit by
typhoons. Contained inside the massive structure: a 828,000-square-foot mall,
including a 1200-seat food court and three-star Michelin restaurant. To ring
in 2016, a 238-second, $1.51 million fireworks display, designed by French
pyrotechnic company Groupe F, launched from the skyscraper.

Taipei’s bike share program, Youbike, which began in 2008, now has
200 stations with 6538 bikes and 55.8 million rentals since the program's
launch. The best part? The price for a 30-minute rental is a mere 15 cents.

Unique architecture peppers the Taipei skyline—including the Taipei
Performing Arts Centre in Shilin, which features a large orb protruding from
an otherwise-minimalist framework. Designed by Rem Koolhaas and David
Gianotten of OMA, it houses a 1500-seat "grand" theater, an 800-seat
"multiform playhouse," and another 800-seat "proscenium
playhouse". The other structure is the Tao Zhu Yin Yuan Tower, also known
as Agora Gardens, conceived by archibiotect Vincent Callebaut. The residential
tower in Xinyin twists 90 degrees in a double helix form to accommodate its
eco-friendly vertical farm design.

Of the 1,769,428 motor vehicles registered in Taipei, 970,865 of them
are motorcycles. Locals call the sea of vehicles going down a ramp a
“motorcycle waterfall.”

Food is such an essential part of Taiwanese culture that locals often
greet each other by asking, “Have you eaten yet?” And nowhere is
that foodie fascination more visible than in Taipei's night markets. The most
famous is the Shilin Night Market, with more than 500 stores and vendors,
where the competing scents of chicken cutlets, oyster omelets, pan-fried buns
and stinky tofu pull visitors in every direction.

Another sign of Taipei’s food obsession? The two most famous
pieces of the 696,373 objects at the National Palace Museum are meat and
cabbage. The 7.4-inch tall Jadeite Cabbage has two insects on its leaves,
symbolizing fertility, while the 2.2-inch Meat-Shaped Stone, made of jasper,
is a replica of stewed pork.

When residents hear Beethoven’s “Für Elise” playing in
the streets of Taipei, the whole neighborhood rushes outside … for the garbage
truck. The “trash doesn’t touch the ground” system requires
Taiwanese citizens to deliver their rubbish straight to the back of the truck
five nights a week in government-sanctioned blue bags. This eliminates the
accumulation of garbage in bins that can attract cockroaches and rats. The
upside: The time waiting curbside often turns into prime time for neighborhood
gossip.

After Typhoon Souledor has hit Taiwan recently, photos of two Taipei
mailboxes, which were blown to a tilt, went viral. By the end of the year, the
red and green Chunghwa Post boxes on Longjiang Road ranked as Taiwan’s
most popular tourist attraction of 2015

The Taipei metro system, which began operating in 1996, has a daily
average ridership of around 2 million, as of a December 2015 report. But
there's no cramming and pushing here: thanks to the “Waiting Line”
drawn on the ground, the locals line up in an orderly manner.

Oscar winner Ang Lee, who directed 1995’s Sense and Sensibility,
2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2008’s Brokeback Mountain
and 2012’s The Life of Pi was born in Taipei on October 23, 1954.

Also born in Taipei: Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, who
served under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. She made history as
the first Asian-American woman to ever be appointed to the President's
Cabinet.

Are you a bookworms, or a night owl, or both? Then make it a point to
visit the 182,986 square foot Eslite bookstore location on Dunhua Road, which
has been open 24 hours a day since 1999.

Are you crazy about Chinese cuisine staples? The restaurant Din Tai
Fung, which specializes in soup dumplings (xiaolongbao) started as a cooking
oil company founded in Taipei in 1958. When profits stalled, the owners
started to supplement their income by selling the dumplings. Business took off
so well, they rebranded in 1972—and soon had locations in Australia, China,
Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States … and a Michelin star.

The Formosan blue magpie is the official city bird of Taipei, as elected
by the residents. The creature has a scratchy voice and a lengthy blue and
white tail, and tends to reside in forests between 984 and 3937 feet above sea
level.

Taipei’s Beitou district is known for its hot springs, which fill
the air with the odor of sulfur. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904,
Japanese soldiers would bathe in the steaming waters, believing the springs
would heal what ailed them. The Beitou Public Bathhouse was built in 1913 and
was the largest bathhouse in Eastern Asia at the time. It was abandoned after
World War II, and turned into the Beitou Hot Springs Museum in 1998.

Watch out, Silicon Valley: The number of tech companies in Taipei Neihu
Technology Park has grown from 600 in 2001 to more than 3000. More proof of
Taipei’s technological influence? YouTube cofounder Steve Chen and Yahoo
cofounder Jerry Yang were both born in Taipei.